An Issue of Protocol
by lurkisblurkis
Summary: The duke of Lantern Waste once set out on a conquest of the impossible. Here is the tale of what followed.
1. Prologue

Author's Note: This is a story begun some time ago, but which I feel the need to continue, for reasons of principle which will hopefully be revealed to you later. It is, essentially, an attempt to explain something I noticed at the end of the LWW movie, something which greatly disturbed me and has not stopped disturbing me since. With this said, it is my hope that you will join me in reveling in the predicaments to come.

Disclaimer: I own neither Narnia nor the Pevensies. Nor a life, apparently.

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**An Issue of Protocol**  
by lurkisblurkis

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Prologue

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The two warriors faced each other on the field of battle, sweat streaming down their faces, blades held high despite shaking hands. They circled each other slowly. Each knew that the time for action, for blood, was drawing swiftly near, that they had but moments either to stay the course of the future, or to let it unfold.

"Listen to me," pleaded the taller of the two. "I never wanted it to happen this way. You must not do this thing—you _must _see reason!"

"The time for reason is past, brother!" roared the other man. "It passed when you made the choice that you did! Now there is no going back!"

Around them, the spectators, huddled into a crowded mass but keeping their distance from the impending fray, held their collective breath as the mail-clad figures continued their dance of war. One golden-haired maiden moved to rush forward, her face a mask of anguish, but before she could so much as take her first step she was restrained by another.

"There is nothing you can do," whispered her sister. "This is the end."

The golden-haired maiden turned her face away and wept bitterly.

"You gave me your word," the older man was saying now. He made no attempt to disguise the turmoil in his face. "_You swore we would do this together!_"

For one moment, the other man paused, uncertainty flitting across his features. He gazed into his enemy's eyes, and those with enough courage to be watching thought for a single, desperate instant that _perhaps there might be hope._

The silence was unbearable.

But then the younger man's eyes hardened. "I chose my path long ago," he hissed. "And I intend to follow it."

He raised his blade high and the tip of it gleamed in the dying sunlight.

"I'm sorry, Peter."

The blade came down.


	2. Chapter 1

Chapter One

In which a proposition is vehemently rejected

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"I think," said the duke of the Lantern Waste one day, "that I would like to grow a beard."

He was speaking in the audience hall, the sort of room where one goes to present an idea or a request to the Kings and Queens of Narnia, and he was not in his throne but standing at the floor below it, so it looked very much as though he were asking the three people on the thrones for their royal permission to do what he had just proposed.

Royal permission, by the looks on their faces immediately after he said this, was unfortunately not forthcoming.

"Oh, no, never," said the person on the far right. "No, that wouldn't do at all. It shouldn't look right on you."

"Imagine him with a beard," the person on the far left said with a grin, and the expressions of shocked moral opposition faded off all of their faces for a moment while they laughed heartily at this idea.

The duke of the Lantern Waste stood very stiff and dignified in the center of the hall while they were doing this. Once the laughter had died down, he met each of his opponents' gazes in turn with identical determined glares, and said, in a very regal voice, "Brinnigar has a beard."

This was the representative who had just gone out of the room, minutes before, after having held conference with the sovereigns of Narnia over a matter related to one of the northern colonies and its island-related trade tarriffs.

"Brinnigar," said the person directly in the middle, "is a Dwarf, and you, poor fellow, are not. What on earth would you do with a beard?"

"I should like to think that I would flaunt it," he replied coldly. "It would look _good _on me."

At this there came dreadful, patronizing sighs from the persons on the left and right, and they got up off of their thrones and went down the couple of steps to where Edmund was standing uncomfortably—for it was, as you may have deduced, King Edmund the Just of Narnia who was suggesting this new and much-frowned-upon facial conquest. His sisters, Queen Susan and Queen Lucy, who had just come down from the throne dais, were now looking dubiously at his cheekbone structure and examining the curve of his jaw, now and then making little comments like "Well, his lips certainly wouldn't agree with it" or "D'you think it would do too much damage to his lovely chin?"

And the High King Peter, who had not moved from his throne, now leaned forward a bit and admitted, "I suppose it _would _cover up that nasty scar you received at the hands of that rogue hedgehog..."

"Oh lay off, lay off!" sputtered the king in question, waving them away with some rather curious arm flapping. "I'll grow a beard if I bloody well want to and you all can just keep your blasted disapproval to yourselves!"

He stalked off.

"...rogue hedgehog indeed...makes it sound as though I couldn't handle a rodent...always neglects to mention the falling ceiling and the red-hot poker..."

One of the queens—it would be unseemly to say who—made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a giggle.


	3. Chapter 2

Author's Note: I have done my research, and yes, the timeline for this chapter is feasible, so no reviews saying otherwise. *sticks tongue out*

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Chapter Two  
In which conspirators conspire

Over the course of the next week, little was seen of the duke of Lantern Waste about the halls and courts of Cair Paravel. The belief was largely held—and in fact perpetuated by the king and queens—that their brother had taken some dreadful illness, and was being sequestered in his royal rooms so as to prevent or at least contain the "abominable effusion of vomit" which would surely otherwise threaten the pleasant atmosphere of the summer corridors.

In reality, the High King and his sisters simply didn't want to reveal the horrifying truth to their subjects. They didn't want to admit it to each other, either—but all knew, with a sort of sickening, gut-wrenching finality, that King Edmund—_their _Edmund—was at beard-growing.

This did not stop them from denying it verbally.

"I don't imagine he's actually _doing _the thing," spoke up Queen Lucy out of nowhere one morning over toast (Edmund had been having his meals brought up to his room, his selection of foodstuffs appropriately paltry for someone allegedly dying of indigestion). "I mean, he knows it'll end horribly, and he certainly wouldn't go against _our _wishes. He's probably just sulking."

Peter and Susan exchanged a worried glance.

"No, of course...Ed's not disobeying us," responded the High King, trying with great valor to disguise the doubt in his voice, but meeting, of course, with utter failure. "After all, he's...we've made our opinions quite clear..."

"He did say that bit about doing it anyway," started Susan, biting her lip.

"No! He didn't mean it!" replied Peter hurriedly. "He would never—he wouldn't—no—it's all silly—probably just—" And then there was omelet in his mouth, and he seemed to be talking exclusively to himself, and Queen Lucy didn't try to make out any of the garbled words.

As four days stretched into five, and five hovered dangerously on six, however, the King and Queens could no longer sit back and pretend not to be worried. Their brother had never spent so much time alone in his quarters. Either he _was_ committing the most hideous of cosmetic atrocities, or he was engaged in some other, worse crime which the three siblings could not even begin to dream of. In either case, as Lucy pointed out on the morning of the seventh day, when even the fauns were beginning to talk, they _must _go up and confront him, and see to what extent the no-longer-hypothetical damage had been done.

"You're right, of course, Lu," the High King had said heavily. "We've simply got to."

And so that afternoon found the three monarchs making their reluctant way down the royal bedroom hall, their feet dragging on the royal bedroom hall rug, all wishing that they didn't have to do this and trying to think of a proper way to do it anyway, and walking even more slowly when they realized (again and again) that they none of them had any idea of how to go about such an unpleasant conversation. Lucy suggested at one point, in a very hushed voice, that perhaps they might leave and come back later at night with razors, and just have the bloody thing off and be done with it. But Peter was firm. "No, Lu," he said; "he's got to be brought to justice, _real _justice, and we can't go about it all underhanded like that. He has to _know _he's giving it up forever."

Now they had reached the door; the bronze knob, ornately cast in the shape of a lion's head with flowing mane and bared teeth, seemed to leer at them. ("He couldn't even go wrong with liony hair," whispered Susan irritably. "But even Aslan doesn't have a _beard_.")

They looked at the door for a while. Edmund could be heard faintly, pottering about on the other side.

"Well are you going to do it or shall I?" hissed Peter.

Lucy—the stories, you know, never truly afforded her quite enough credit for bravery—stepped up, raised her hand, and knocked three times.

There was a moment's pause; and then Edmund stood in the doorway, looking fresh and awake in a blue tunic and trousers, and seemingly entirely unsurprised by the arrival of his siblings. He held the door open at first, but then, seeing that his visitors showed no inclination of coming in, or indeed of even moving at all, he let go of the knob and leaned casually on the doorframe.

"Are you going to say anything?"

From the looks on their faces, it did not seem like they were going to be able to.


End file.
